Achille Starace

Achille Starace (18 August 1889-29 April 1945) was Secretary of the National Fascist Party of Italy from 12 December 1931 to 31 October 1939, succeeding Giovanni Giuriati and preceding Ettore Muti.

Biography
Achille Starace was born on 18 August 1889 in Sannicola, southern Italy, the son of a wine and oil merchant. Starace joined the bersaglieri sharpshooters in 1912, becoming a Lieutenant; he gained a reputation after brawling with pacifist demonstrators at a Milan cafe in August 1914. In March 1917, he joined a lodge of Freemasons, and he became a nationalist and fascist activist. In 1922, he led a squad of Blackshirts during the March on Rome, and he became Party Inspector of the National Fascist Party. In 1928, he became the head of the PNF in Milan, and he served as Party Secretary from 1931 to 1939. As secretary, he organized large parades and marches, anti-Semitic laws, and helped in developing Benito Mussolini's cult of personality. During the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, he became a Major-General of the Royal Italian Army, and he helped in the capture of Gondar from Ethiopia. From 1939 to May 1941, he served as Chief-of-Staff of the Blackshirts, and he was arrested by Pietro Badoglio's government in 1943 due to his former status as a PNF leader. Starace was later imprisoned in a Venice concentration camp by Nazi Germany after failing to regain a position of power in the Italian Social Republic, and he was later released to Milan. There, he was captured by partisans during a morning jog, and he was executed and displayed at a gas station next to the bodies of Mussolini and other fascist leaders.